


i love the house that we live in (i love you all too much)

by moonbeatblues



Series: you look too good (to leave bare) [1]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, i legally can't write cr fic without a bit about everyone missing molly, listen i know ep 69 is gonna be Real Shit, so have this before it gets real
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-27
Updated: 2019-06-27
Packaged: 2020-05-20 16:44:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19380703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonbeatblues/pseuds/moonbeatblues
Summary: It’s late when Jester gives Beau her tattoo.Dark out, of course, not that it gives away the hour on its own, but even from up in his tower she can hear Cad snoring.They’re set up in the happy room, which Jester’s had blocked off all week to work on the walls. She’s still working, too, and she made Beau promise not to look, so she’s dutifully shading her eyes while Jester mixes gold into the ink.(“You usually paint stuff so fast, though. What’s the difference this time?”“Well,” Jester says conspiratorially, and swirls her thumb in the paint drying on her wrist, “I really want to get it right.”She dutifully smears a coagulating streak under Beau’s eye like an apology before closing the door in her face, and it comes away red and purple on her fingers.)





	i love the house that we live in (i love you all too much)

**Author's Note:**

> i’ve been kicking around meta on tumblr abt relationships and i kinda just wanted to write something nice and soft
> 
> title is from antichrist by the 1975

It’s late when Jester gives Beau her tattoo. Dark out, of course, not that it gives away the hour on its own, but even from up in his tower she can hear Cad snoring.

 

They’re set up in the happy room, which Jester’s had blocked off all week to work on the walls. She’s still working, too, and she made Beau promise not to look, so she’s dutifully shading her eyes while Jester mixes gold into the ink.

 

(“You usually paint stuff so fast, though. What’s the difference this time?”

“Well,” Jester says conspiratorially, and swirls her thumb in the paint drying on her wrist, “I really want to get it right.”

She dutifully smears a coagulating streak under Beau’s eye like an apology before closing the door in her face, and it comes away red and purple on her fingers.)

 

Beau always loves watching Jester work, though, so she peeks a little through her cupped hands at her as she’s got her eyebrows all knitted together rifling through the needles, milk-white teeth biting into her tongue. She holds each one up to the nearest candle in turn, eyes darting back between it and the stencil and humming when she finds the right one, bundling the roll Orly’d given her in Nicodranas back up and shoving it in the wide front pocket of her smock before Beau has to pretend she wasn’t looking.

A cold hand lands on her shoulder, and she turns to see Jester setting down the baking tray she’s borrowed from Cad.

“All set,” she says, and it’s not so chirpy, more of a purr.

 

It’s rude, is what it is, and Beau drops her head and hums, suddenly shaky.

“Cool.”

 

“Don’t be nervous, Beau!” Jester drags the soaked rag lazily along her shoulders— it’s diluted, but the alcohol still bites at the skin she’d opened training in the sand pit earlier. “I’m really good at it now! And I practiced all this time so I’d get it right for you, so you can’t chicken out now.”

 

“No, I trust you, just,” and she does, really. Too much, probably.

“It’s kinda weird, y’know? I wanted to get it ever since we left Shadycreek, and it’s finally happening.” The back of her neck tickles from the rinse, and she shoves down the urge to reach for it. “I was kinda worried I’d forget what it looked like. Not seeing it all the time anymore, and all.”

 Jester hums, looking over the stencil again.

 

“It’s okay,” and she smooths the waxy paper out across Beau’s skin. “Now you don’t have to be scared of forgetting.”

 She reaches for Beau's other hand and squeezes, drops her head so she can whisper into Beau’s ear.

“I was scared too, you know. I drew him so much I had to buy a new notebook in Zadash, just so I wouldn’t forget what his face looked like. He would be so mad if I did.”

 

Beau can feel the cool ink, the caged-in eye, the lines radiating out almost up to her hairline and into the space between her shoulder blades. It’s weird, just how much she wants to cry in that instant.

 

“Yeah.”

 

Jester lifts the paper from her back and turns back to the tray, slides the hollow needle into the little holder and dips the whole thing into the little tin of gold.

“Ready?”

 

And damn, Beau really thought she was.

Jester can’t keep holding her hand, though, and after a few seconds of digging her nails into her palm she just has to bite down on her fingers.

 

It’s not so much the actual pain as it is just the whole amalgamation— the sound, the way Jester has to keep going back to the tin, the way she’s just gone completely silent— but either way it’s a little too much, altogether, and she has to ask Jester to stop after only a minute or two so she can breathe.

 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Jester keeps saying, and combing through Beau’s hair, “I can heal it right afterwards and everything, it’ll be okay.”

 

“I don’t—“ she says, and wheezes and wipes her increasingly drooly fingers on the sheet, “How much did you get?”

 

Jester pushes the fringe off Beau’s forehead, circles her thumbs at the base of her skull, the way she knows by now will calm her down— “Most of the eye,” and Beau knows she’s lying, but she appreciates it anyway, “want me to get Caduceus?”

 

And that would help, probably, maybe he’d make her some tea or just hold her hands in his big, warm ones and not really say anything, and Beau’s about to say yes, even feeling guilty about it, because _damn_ , but then there are feet shifting on the floorboards just outside and it seems like someone else is awake.

 

“Jester?”

 

Yasha’s voice always curls so pretty around Jester’s name, soft and they still haven’t met anyone else who talks like her, not even here. She ducks her head in, face pale and lovely and heart-shaped in the dim ring of candlelight, like a barn owl, and squints at them.

“Why are you on the floor?”

 

And then her face goes loose and open, and she’s looking up and past them, at the walls Beau hasn’t seen yet, and Jester goes “Oh! You weren’t supposed to—“

 

“ _Jester_ ,” Yasha breathes, and steps in, fully— she’s out of her furs, for once, in the sleep robes Cad and Jester had gone out and bought, the ones with their names stitched on the front and everything, and for some reason the softness of it hits Beau so much it hurts.

 

And Beau turns back around, finally, and looks at the wall and the sweat sticking her hair to her head feels so cold, all at once, because she gets why Jester’s been taking so long with it.

 

The moon takes up almost the whole thing, a crescent so thin the edges nearly touch, like an eclipse, and Molly’s lounging in the curve of it, low, his coat pooling underneath him and dripping down, like blood, like water.

It’s so big it could just be him— like a mirror, or a window, and just beyond the glass or silver he’d be there, like in a moment he’ll open his mouth and laugh and it’ll vibrate. Shatter, even.

 

(In the morning Cad’ll come in, with breakfast and wondering where his best tray’s gone, and ask why Molly’s winking.

 Beau won’t answer, though, because that’s just how he slept. One eye cracked just so, even when he was bone tired and wasn’t taking a watch, this line of red in the dark— his eyes didn’t glow so much as just held light, like embers, they’d catch the fire just right in one moment and glitter like rubies all of a sudden.

Jester’s clever, so clever, and Beau doesn’t know how she’s got it but in the dark with just a candle or two, the painting does the same thing.

A bead of red, lit up to match the moon.)

 

“ _Jester_ ,” she echoes, because she doesn’t really have a handle on other words right now _,_ and next to her Jester squirms and taps Beau’s head, trying to get her to look away.

 

“I didn’t want you guys to see until it was done, I wanted it to be a surprise,” and she sounds so sad that Beau takes her hand and squeezes.

 

“Sorry, sorry, just,” and all of a sudden Beau kind of wants her to just pick up the needle again, thinks she could grit her teeth a lot better because Jester’s just so _lovely_ , and she trusts her to stamp this little bit of Molly into her skin. She thinks it would feel just like seeing the wall, to brush her fingers over her neck and know what’s there, to see it in the downstairs mirror after bathing and have to just stop and breathe.

 

“You made him look so pretty.”

 

“Just like he’d want,” and Yasha comes and sits down, too, on the other side of Beau, and it’s weird, how she feels balanced all at once. She can feel more than see Yasha’s hand hover over it, where the stencil ink gives way to gold.

“He’d love this, too,” and it still catches her so off-guard, how warm Yasha’s voice gets talking about Molly, except that maybe it’s for her, too?

 

No, that’s stupid, it’s all Molly, still, on the wall and stinging her eyes and sitting there and gold stamped in her skin, except Yasha takes her other hand and they’re all just sort of looking up at him.

Like a fresco, like it’s more a marker of where Molly’s resting than the coat, and with some fraction of an eye already done and Jester and Yasha holding her hands she feels a little floaty. And, you know, she _knew_ it, but in that moment Beau really gets it when they say he’s still with them, like the weight she’s had all these months wasn’t really her carrying him. Like it was just her down in that grave, too, toes always dragging up against the sides because she wouldn’t just _jump out_. Couldn’t.

 

Jester gets back to work, eventually, and Yasha holds both her hands and talks lowly to her about how she did the same thing when Molly was getting his, how he’d laugh for the first few minutes and never ask but would always grip her wrists so tight they bruised. And it actually hurts more this time, because Jester has to go back over the bits she already did so they show up right, but it’s like she’s carrying him, now, taking some of the weight out of Jester’s hands and Yasha’s voice for herself. Like they’re lifting her out.

 

Once Jester’s done, they don’t really move, either, because it has to sit and she can’t sleep on it or touch it and damn if they don’t both know her too well to leave her to tear at it like a wounded dog.

 

She’s half-asleep, sort of bundled up in the bedsheet they’d laid out, and Jester keeps admiring her handiwork, looking over it and tracing around it— “It looks _really_ good, Beau, really—“ and that’s already a lot without Yasha murmuring agreement, so she feels almost radiant from the attention.

 

It’s a new thing, okay? Being looked at so much, and she really didn’t expect it to take this much out of her, but Jester did something and now the back of her neck is just tingling and a little cold, and they’re still both talking in these low, warm voices and she just sort of feels glued to the floor.

Her gut is unwinding from its earlier death grip and she just feels sort of, like, syrupy? And she keeps trying to pay attention, because she thinks they’re talking about her, but then someone’s hands start sorting through the sweat-damp length of her hair— way too long, especially now it’s down— and her eyes keep closing and rolling back like marbles; it’s the slowest fight she ever loses.

 

**Author's Note:**

> i’m over at @seafleece on tumblr, come say hi!


End file.
